Re: [rtcweb] Summary of Application Developers' opinions of the current WebRTC API and SDP as a control surface

Stefan Håkansson LK <stefan.lk.hakansson@ericsson.com> Tue, 16 July 2013 13:43 UTC

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From: Stefan Håkansson LK <stefan.lk.hakansson@ericsson.com>
To: Iñaki Baz Castillo <ibc@aliax.net>
Thread-Topic: [rtcweb] Summary of Application Developers' opinions of the current WebRTC API and SDP as a control surface
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Date: Tue, 16 Jul 2013 13:42:58 +0000
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Subject: Re: [rtcweb] Summary of Application Developers' opinions of the current WebRTC API and SDP as a control surface
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On 7/8/13 10:43 PM, Iñaki Baz Castillo wrote:
> 2013/7/8 Stefan Håkansson LK <stefan.lk.hakansson@ericsson.com>:
>>> So, was there ever a consensus that "developers MUST NOT
>>> touch SDP"?
>>
>> No, developers are free to touch the SDP (and probably must in certain
>> cases).
>
>
> Do you feel how much painful is "touching a browser generated SDP"? To be clear:
>
> - JS requests "A" to browser.
> - Browser returns "A" (in the form of unmanageable blob).
> - JS modifies "A" to send "A-bis" in the wire.
> - Remote peer receives "A-bis" and replies "B-bis".
> - Both JS app are lying to their respective  browsers to get the
> desired behavior.
>
> This is really painful, really.

I've been doing:

- JS requests "A" to browser.
- Browser returns "A" (in the form of unmanageable blob).
- JS modifies "A" to send "A-bis" in the wire to a system not 
understanding "A" as is
- Remote end receives "A-bis" and replies "B-bis".
- JS modifies "B-bis" (using parts of "A" in the process) and applies 
"B" to browser

Not nice and clean for sure, but quite doable. JS is nice for text parsing.

But the big problems I experienced were:
* "A" was different between different browsers (in a way that the JS had 
to be different)
* "A" would change in ways breaking my code between versions
* What would accepted for "B" would also vary.

Most of this would presumable go away once we settle on exactly how SDP 
should be used (assuming SDP stays).

But all that said, I still think we need API surface that makes the need 
to mangle the SDP an exception (OTOH, perhaps interop with legacy - as I 
did - is an exception? Depends on where you come from I guess.).

>
> In the other side, as I explained in other thread (may be in this
> one?) adding some methods to the current API (to avoid playing with
> the SDP) is not the way to go. A specification in which the JS app
> does not know what he is sending in-the-wire (a blob generated by the
> browser) is doomed to failure.
>
> Please remember that mandating SDP (plain SDP) means that no other
> media signaling protocol can be implemented in future WebRTC apps.

I think Peter Thatcher had an idea of an API extension where you could 
do away with SDP if you want to.

>
> SIP phones have *fixed* code and *fixed* logic. This is no longer true
> in the Web.
>
> --
> Iñaki Baz Castillo
> <ibc@aliax.net>
>